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MAWARU-PENGUINDRUM · Hoshino Lily Art Works

Finally, finally putting this up. I promised everyone I'd start doing reviews of all our artbooks starting this year, but I never got around to -actually- doing it. I managed to take photos of this one artbook some time ago, but after I'd started typing out the post, I decided to delete everything. Because I wanted to sound objective, everything I typed out just felt ~pretentious~ for me. It was like I was pretending to be someone who knew art and artbooks very well, when in fact I just really like looking at them ;; And so, I decided to leave it, and it got buried deep in my drafts for a while. But here it is, at last - my (pseudo)review of MAWARU-PENGUINDRUM · Hoshino Lily Art Works 「輪るピングドラム 星野 リリィ アートワ-クス」 ♥ ♥

Here's a little something about Aian and myself -- once we find a certain anime interesting, we tend to finish it within a week. If it's an ongoing series, we wait for episodes every week. That's usually the case, and that was what happened with MAWARU-PENGUINDRUM. We'd heard about it from friends, and after pestering Aian for almost a year about it, we finally got to watch it. I'm not sure when, I guess it was last year or the year before that? Anyway, we finished it within three days. We were that hooked. It was one of those series that made you go "GWAAH~!" after each episode. I'm not making any sense, but that's how it was! So when Aian found the artbook in Kinokuniya KLCC, we knew we just had to, had to buy it.

Out of all of Aian's artbooks, MAWARU-PENGUINDRUM · Hoshino Lily Art Works has got to be my favorite. Aside from the fact that I like the series, I also really like Hoshino Lily's work. I've read some of her BL titles before, and I've always liked the way she draws her characters. The book itself is also nicely presented, and its content is super pretty. It has 88 pages, and is A4 in size. The front and back of the slip-cover features a full-color illustration of the main characters. The cover is SO PRETTY. My photos don't show it, but the stars are.. sparklier. Also, the words on the cover actually have an etched effect to them, in gold. These are just tiny details, but they give quite an impact. These photos do not do it justice AT ALL.

The artbook is divided into four sections. The first one, the Illustration Gallery, is made up of 17 pages containing full color illustrations. Most of them are of the main trio (Shoma, Kanba, and Hikari), the Princess of the Crystal, and the penguins.

One of my favorite illustrations in the book. I feel that this one represents the relationship between the Takakura siblings the best.

The cover illustration is also in this section, presented as a two-page spread. Love how all the characters were presented!

The next 29 pages make up the End Card Collection, which show the end cards from the anime. Now that I think about it.. how come there are 25 end cards (I counted!) when the anime was only 24 episodes..? I have no idea ahaha ;;

Sanetoshi~~ ♥ ♥

Another favorite. A bit of a spoiler though..? But you won't get it unless you watch the series. Go go!

Next is the Character Design section, which is my favorite part! I like seeing how artists come up with designs for their characters, and as I've said before, I really like how Hoshino Lily draws hers, so seeing how she came up with each one is fascinating for me. I especially like how she paid attention to little details on the outfits! Things like how the hem of this dress should fall, how this skirt should look like when sitting down, etc. You can see she even put notes on the side! When artists put a little extra work on those little things, it makes me really happy~~

See how she even indicated the wrong and right way the hem of the dress should fall? I found that really interesting!

What I found the most interesting though, was how Sanetoshi's face changed so much throughout the planning stage. I'm really glad they decided to go with the face that Sanetoshi has now though.. if he looked more ~serious~ it would change his character a lot I think!

And for the last part, some extras! There's an interview with both Hoshino Lily and Ikuhara Kunihiko (the creator of Revolutionary Girl Utena, also co-creator and director of Mawaru-Penguindrum), although both are in Japanese. I really wish I could read it ;_____; There's also a cute little manga of events which take place in the middle of the anime.

Aaand that's that. Woop, did I include too many photos? I kept thinking that I should keep the photos to less than 10 so you'd all be tempted to buy the real thing, but I got a bit overexcited while taking photos lol. Still, buy this artbook!! There's a looot of eyecandy inside, so whether or not you're into Penguindrum I'm sure you'll like it. (That's how I choose which artbooks to buy -- if it's pretty, it's coming with me.) It's not available locally (because we STILL don't have a Kinokuniya in Manila wtf), but you can probably send a request for it on Fully Booked. OR you can ask our friends over at Eiwa Manga Store to order it for you, for a small fee. If you have Paypal, there's also CDJapan and Amazon JP (links below!). Bottomline is, if you can get your hands on this artbook, but eeeeeet. And for less than P1k, you won't regret it, I promise!!

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